[Lenin's marginal notes and excerpts]

The "Statistical Survey of Kaluga Province for 1896" provides extensive material on migratory trades. This material was carefully studied and partially used as illustrations in "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" (Collected Works, vol. III, pp. 416, 443, 445, 451, 452). On the pages of this survey, Lenin provides detailed calculations on the number of migratory workers by season (spring, summer, winter), and on the extent of migration for earnings by women and children.

STATISTICAL SURVEY OF KALUGA PROVINCE FOR 1896 — SUPPLEMENT TO THE REPORT OF THE KALUGA PROVINCIAL ZEMSTVO BOARD — KALUGA 1897

The most important materials for the present Survey were: 1) reports from volunteer correspondents on the state of agriculture and trades; 2) data collected through village elders and volost [district] administrations on sowing, harvests, and persons engaged in trades; 3) data on public education furnished by various institutions or extracted from their reports.

The lack of necessary means and manpower did not allow the statistical department to carry out a complete household-by-household census of sowing and harvests... It was found possible to carry out only a selective census of several households in each settlement... In order to... village elders were instructed to interview about the number of male and female souls, the number of work horses, the amount of grain sown and harvested, and also about the number of sheaves collected — one-twentieth of all householders, namely: the 1st, 21st, 41st, 61st, etc. householder in each settlement, following the numbering of the insurance or tax list, without skipping households that do not sow at all...

... The limits of the groups were established so that the groups of households in the current statistics approximately coincide with the corresponding groups in the basic statistics (in the latter, the basis for grouping is the sown area). The group tabulation of the collected data is published in the present issue only in the form of district totals.

... The group tabulation of these materials allowed... the hitherto obscure question to be illuminated of the productivity and value of the land included

[NB notations in margins throughout]

in the circle of peasant economic enterprises of various sizes, and of the role of "land collectors" in our agricultural production...

A. Peshekhonov

... according to 1886 data, out of 100 male workers 46% are engaged in migratory trades...

... the number of persons engaged in trades significantly exceeds the number of persons engaged in farm-labourer work... seasonal wages for workers in individual districts must strongly depend on the state of migratory trades in them.

[NB]

... the more developed migratory trades are, the higher the monetary pay to the farm labourer... relying on migratory trades, those hiring themselves out have the opportunity to raise not only the monetary, but what is more important, the real wages.

[NB — ambiguous expression]

... authoritative confirmation of this assumption we find in the numerous and at times very sharp complaints of the landowners about the broad development of trades as the cause of the difficulties they experience with labour...

... the pay of a year-round worker is determined by the conditions not of the landlord's economy but of the peasant economy.

If we tally the reports of correspondents on labour shortages by groups of districts, depending on the development of migratory trades in them, we find:

[Table: Groups I-III by percentage of workers in migratory trades, with columns for All reports, Those complaining of labour shortage, Percentage of complaints, Average pay to farm labourer]

[NB]

Complaints about labour shortages are fewer the less developed migratory trades are...

From the Zavarskaya volost of Tarusa district they write: "farm owners... found workers with difficulty... the suburban population is spoiled... To live as farm workers is considered shameful, and they aspire to the cities, where they form the proletariat and the 'golden brigades'; the village, meanwhile, suffers from the lack of fit and healthy workers."

In order to examine the question of the sown area of peasant farms more closely, we divide all farms into groups by the amount of winter grain they sow. The first group includes households that do not sow at all; the second — those sowing not more than 15 measures of winter grain; the third, fourth and fifth — those sowing from 15 to 30, from 30 to 45, and from 45 to 60 measures; households sowing more than 60 measures of winter grain form the last group. 7.4% of the total number of households with 3.3% of the total peasant population of the province belong to the first group. Data on the percentage of the remaining groups of households, of the population included in them, and of the sown area at their disposal are given in the table below:

Groups:     I      II     III    IV     V      VI     Total
Households: 7.4    30.8   40.2   13.3   5.8    —      92.6 [sic]
Souls:      3.8    25.4   40.7   17.2   8.1    5.3    96.7
Sown area:  —      39.0   22.2   12.3   10.6   —      100

Even this table shows that the unevenness of distribution of sown area among farms of different groups is partly smoothed out by the larger number of mouths per household in the higher groups... however, the larger family size in the higher groups does not fully equalise the land provision of farms of different groups...

[sic!! Nota bene]

[Further marginal notes on working horses, gross income from sowing]

... [NB — very true!]

... the combination of trades with farming complicates the process of drawing agriculture into exchange

[Oh, the style!!]

... the ratio between one's own, rented out, and rented (for 1 year) land is not the same in farms of different sizes...

... The small family size of farms with low sowing probably deprives them of the possibility of sending their members to migratory earnings and thus obtaining the monetary resources necessary for the farm. If that is so, then, of course, they can obtain them only either from local, domestic trades or from their own agricultural enterprise. Given the slight development of local trades in the province, the latter source must often be the only one, and farms with low sowing and small families are thus by the force of circumstances placed in the necessity of devoting a comparatively larger area to industrial crops, to the detriment of their fodder resources.

... the higher prices are, the closer the danger of a mismatch between the fund allotted for consumption and the price of the necessary amount of provisions...

... In numbers calculated for the entire population of Kaluga province, the departure for outside work is expressed as:
Male population — 106.0 thousand souls
Female — 26.8 [thousand souls]
Total — 132.8 thousand souls

... the movement of trades in quantitative terms is not weakening and is not experiencing any fluctuations — it is steadily proceeding in a forward direction, encompassing an ever larger and larger part of the population...

On average, out of the entire population of Kaluga province, approximately 36.0% of the male population and up to 6.3% of the female turn to trades, both at the place of residence and elsewhere; in total 20.7%...

... the number of passports issued annually does not make it possible to determine the number of persons using them, since short-term passports may be issued two or three times in a year to one and the same person. Owing to this circumstance, i.e. the repeated taking out of passports, the number of the latter, one may think, exceeds the number of persons departing on them...

... annual passports for men and families are growing on the whole faster than passports of all terms... existence on earnings from migratory trades is acquiring increasingly stable forms...

... Among the mass of peasant farms, for which migratory trades are obligatory, the following groups can be noted: the first — sending out part or all of its workers for short-term migratory work; the second — in which long-term male migratory work is practised, while farming is left to women and adolescents; and the third group, for which cultivation of the land is either wholly impossible or so unprofitable that it can have no attraction; here develops joint long-term migratory work of men and women and family work... A family that draws its means of subsistence for the year or the greater part of it from earnings in the city has far greater grounds for considering as its place of residence the city that provides its livelihood, rather than the village, with which it has only kinship and fiscal ties.

[contra Zhbankov]

[Notes: 1) 2) 3) — correct!]

* D. N. Zhbankov, "The Influence of Migratory Earnings on the Movement of Population in Kostroma Province"; Lenin's notes on this book are given below, pp. 528–529. Ed.